Radiocarbon dating of charcoal on podzols along a transect reaching 280 kilometers north of the present tree line from Ennadai Lake indicates that former forests were burnt about 3500 years ago and again about 900 years ago. These forests probably were associated with periods of relatively mild climate.

Although an understanding of radiometric dating is central to the preparation of every geologist, many students struggle with the concepts and mathematics of radioactive decay. Physical demonstrations and hands-on experiments can be used to good effect in addressing this teaching conundrum. Water, heat, and electrons all move or flow in response to generalized forces (gradients in pressure, tem...

prior to being transported into the lake system. The combinaThe accuracy of Arctic lake chronologies has been assessed by tion of these factors commonly leads to radiocarbon ages measuring the C activities of modern carbon sources and that are apparently too old. Discrete macrofossils are rarely applying these isotopic mass balances to dating fossil lake materifound in sufficient quantities for...

The reconstruction of the chronology of historical buildings is a tricky issue, as usually there are not historical documents that allow the assessment of construction phases, and some materials are hardly reliable for the use of dating techniques (e.g., stone). However, in the last two decades, important advances on the use of absolute dating methods on building materials have increased the po...

Precise and direct dating of the Minoan eruption of Santorini (Thera) in Greece, a global Bronze Age time marker, has been made possible by the unique find of an olive tree, buried alive in life position by the tephra (pumice and ashes) on Santorini. We applied so-called radiocarbon wiggle-matching to a carbon-14 sequence of tree-ring segments to constrain the eruption date to the range 1627-16...

Saint Birgitta (Saint Bridget of Sweden) lived between 1303 and 1373 and was designated one of Europe's six patron saints by the Pope in 1999. According to legend, the skulls of St. Birgitta and her daughter Katarina are maintained in a relic shrine in Vadstena abbey, mid Sweden. The origin of the two skulls was assessed first by analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to confirm a maternal relat...

Using the 12 published results from the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the TS (Turin Shroud), a robust statistical analysis has been performed in order to test the conclusion by Damon et al. (1998) that the TS is mediaeval. The 12 datings, furnished by the three laboratories, show a lack of homogeneity. We used the partial information about the location of the single measurements to check whether t...

The Midland Skull, found in 1953 in western Texas, is possibly the oldest dated specimen of man yet discovered in the New M70rld. Wendorf, Krieger and Albritton in their report ( '55) on the find, assign it to a period definitely earlier than the occupation of that area by Folsom Man. At Lubbock, Texas, 150 miles to the north of Midland, the Folsom level has been established by radiocarbon dati...